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I'm looking for something like this that runs on a raspberrypi. The pi would provide the image to the floppy drive connection.

by paulio 6y ago

detaro 6y ago
Curious why specifically a Pi? Is there something specific you want to build?
- hakfoo 6y ago
  My guess is that he has one already, so why buy new kit if unneeded? I was excited about Pi1541 as I have a C128D that needs more of a life than one C64 Flight Simulator II disc I have handy, but it only runs on more recent models than my 1B.
- paulio 6y ago
  I guess it doesn't have to be a pi. The idea would be that the pi would connect to your network and provide the floppy drive into an older system. Any system on the network could command the pi to mount the floppy image to the connected device. Basically I don't want to have to be constantly moving a usb disk around.
  - snvzz 6y ago
    Ultimately, the pi is unsuitable for deterministic behavior, and Linux is unsuitable for the kind of realtime needed to sample from a floppy directly. Don't get me wrong: It would be possible to do it, but it would be theoretically not reliable, even if it felt reliable. You'd also need some sort of glue in between, as floppy drives signal at 5v and the rpi isn't 5v tolerant. Therefore, you could connect the pi to the stm32, rather than directly run the floppy drive from the pi.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > Curious why specifically a Pi? Not the OP, but I guess the power of Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has one - really useful if you want to do something in a hurry without anything extra. I've used a Pi as an emergency programmer on multiple occasions, as an SPI flash burner, as an SWD debugger, as an AVR programmer. You can even use the Pi as an USB-FDD bootdisk or emulate an IDE driver via its parallel interface.
djbeadle 6y ago
What about turning the Raspberry Pi in to a USB gadget? https://www.adafruit.com/product/3945 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3945
rasz 6y ago
Here is one for PCs http://www.smbaker.com/raspberry-pi-virtual-floppy-for-isa-pc-xtat-computers http://www.smbaker.com/raspberry-pi-virtual-floppy-for-isa-p... The problem with pi is non determinism, meaning you cant bitbang FM/MFM encoded data stream like the floppy drive. Smbakers project goes around this using dual port RAM implementing mechanism employed by for example 1995 DiskOnChip (m-systems, later Sandisk)

I'm looking for something like this that runs on a raspberrypi. The pi would provide the image to the floppy drive connection.

by paulio 6y ago

I'm looking for something like this that runs on a raspberrypi. The pi would provide the image to the floppy drive connection.

detaro 6y ago

Curious why specifically a Pi? Is there something specific you want to build?

hakfoo 6y ago
My guess is that he has one already, so why buy new kit if unneeded? I was excited about Pi1541 as I have a C128D that needs more of a life than one C64 Flight Simulator II disc I have handy, but it only runs on more recent models than my 1B.
paulio 6y ago
I guess it doesn't have to be a pi. The idea would be that the pi would connect to your network and provide the floppy drive into an older system. Any system on the network could command the pi to mount the floppy image to the connected device. Basically I don't want to have to be constantly moving a usb disk around.
- snvzz 6y ago
  Ultimately, the pi is unsuitable for deterministic behavior, and Linux is unsuitable for the kind of realtime needed to sample from a floppy directly. Don't get me wrong: It would be possible to do it, but it would be theoretically not reliable, even if it felt reliable. You'd also need some sort of glue in between, as floppy drives signal at 5v and the rpi isn't 5v tolerant. Therefore, you could connect the pi to the stm32, rather than directly run the floppy drive from the pi.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> Curious why specifically a Pi? Not the OP, but I guess the power of Raspberry Pi is that everyone already has one - really useful if you want to do something in a hurry without anything extra. I've used a Pi as an emergency programmer on multiple occasions, as an SPI flash burner, as an SWD debugger, as an AVR programmer. You can even use the Pi as an USB-FDD bootdisk or emulate an IDE driver via its parallel interface.

djbeadle 6y ago

What about turning the Raspberry Pi in to a USB gadget? https://www.adafruit.com/product/3945 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3945

rasz 6y ago

Here is one for PCs http://www.smbaker.com/raspberry-pi-virtual-floppy-for-isa-pc-xtat-computers http://www.smbaker.com/raspberry-pi-virtual-floppy-for-isa-p... The problem with pi is non determinism, meaning you cant bitbang FM/MFM encoded data stream like the floppy drive. Smbakers project goes around this using dual port RAM implementing mechanism employed by for example 1995 DiskOnChip (m-systems, later Sandisk)